Had you done four tracking before your first solo album was even a thought?
I've done it since I was 14 or so. Hours and hours of unmarked blank tapes. I've been doing that for a long time, I just didn't play them for anybody.
As a way to write songs?
Just to record. I could borrow a four track. It was something I could understand. Mixing boards and eight tracks 24 tracks and all that seemed like a really complicated nightmare. It seems like there's some point where the guy who works at the studio doesn't know what in the world is going on and is running around, checking all the connections--can't figure out why he's not getting tape delay on the snare or whatever.
Seeing that from the perspective of a band that's recording...
Pretty intimidating.
So you borrowed a four track back then?
I borrowed one for a really long time. A year at a time. It was a friend of mines' brother-in-law's, and he didn't really need it. One of those old Tascam ones with the big knobs.
Were you using that before you were ever playing music in a band?
Yeah. Sometimes I would sync up two of them by cuing them up and hitting play at the same time and constantly adjusting the speed on one of them to catch up with the other.
No way.
That's not that hard to do. It seems like it'd be a nightmare. A lot of them [four tracks] don't have speed controls now. The old ones had sweepable mids for EQ and speed control.
Did you record with drums and stuff or did you just do guitar?
Mostly just guitar. A lot of piano. I didn't have any drums.
Were you playing around with sounds or were you working more on songs?
I didn't really look at it as separate aspects back then. I was really taken with the prospect of being able to record one thing and then another thing at a different time that would play at the same time. It was all about parts and I didn't think much about sounds. I EQ'd things, but I just did it instinctively.
Did you have one mic you used on everything?
Basically. I think it was a [Shure SM] 57.
It's probably the best choice.
It's a good mic. People overlook it as soon as they can afford a more expensive one sometimes. It's the one. Somebody told me that the [Shure SM] 58 is really the same mic with a different grill.
It's got a boost in the high end so there's more treble to it. The screen can help dampen the popped p's but not completely.
The 57s are great. You can't really break them.
So you were four tracking. Did you find yourself playing music with others eventually?
I was in a band in High School. We didn't really play out--we just made tapes. We'd be recording an "album," so to speak, except it'd be an album we'd record to cassette four track and then make some tapes.
Was everybody in the band into the recording process?
Yeah, everybody was pretty into it. It was pretty exciting. It was something to do. It was a good way to spend time. I can't say much for the music though.
How would you record those kind of things? Would you record the drums first or would you play live?
The first thing that we did, we had this drum machine called Dr. Rhythm which was not slick in any way at all. It didn't sound even remotely, like real drums.
Analog sounds.
The cymbal went, "Chhhhhhhh."
White noise with a gate on it.
So we'd program that and play that and something else at the same time onto a track. We did a lot of bouncing or ping ponging, whatever you want to call it. We'd try not to put more than a couple of things on the same track. Everything was totally dead. We didn't have any effects at all. The next year after that, we had a real drummer and two four tracks and we were syncing them up like I was talking about. We'd do the drums to two tracks in stereo because that was of the utmost importance to have the drums in stereo 'cause they could be now. We'd have that [the drums], the bass and one other thing on one four track, and the other one would be mostly for vocals. We'd just chase the drum...
Start the four track with the drums and try to follow it?
Right. Follow that one with the vocal track.
I can't believe you were doing that.
It's not that hard. It just sounds like it would be a nightmare. You have to have some patience.
Keep trying it over and over till you get it right. You'd just mix down to a cassette deck?
I had a friend who had a Nakamichi. One time we mixed down to Beta video tape 'cause supposedly that sounded better than cassettes. I couldn't really tell.
Did you use SM 57s for that stuff?
We'd get kind of extensive with micing the drums. We'd round up as many mics as we could. Sometimes I'd even use some headphones for a mic.
Did you have a little mixer to run them into?
Eventually. All we had were normal mics. We didn't have any fancy stuff.
Did you ever do any four track recording with Heatmiser?
That went straight to a real studio.
Obviously Tony Lash [Heatmiser's drummer and producer/engineer] was involved.
He was the guy who was in control of that and he was good at it. I was used to hearing things a certain way so it sort of threw me off the first time we went into a studio. It sounded extremely clean and I was really excited because it was a new way to do things. Over time I reverted back to things I initially liked, soundwise.
When did you think of doing a solo album? Did anyone approach you at first?
The first one [Roman Candle] was just the most recent four track stuff. I played the tapes for a couple of people and they encouraged me to play it for a couple of other people and send it to Denny and Christopher at Cavity Search Records and see if they wanted to do a single. They just wanted to put the whole thing out.
How did you record that stuff?
It was two four tracks. One was Neil's [Gust--other songwriter/guitarist in Heatmiser] and also this guy Jaime's. There was an SM 57 and a Radio Shack mic.
What kind?
I don't even know. It's one of those kind that you can't even take the cord off of and has an off/on switch. I didn't have many options 'cause the songs were really quiet. All I could do was plug in the mic and turn everything all the way up. The fader and the preamp and all that.
You put as much as you could to tape?
Yeah, but even at that there wasn't a whole lot getting to tape. It was really noisy. I kind of liked it. That was the way it had to be. There's something to be said for things having to be a certain way. Then you stop worrying whether you should have made this decision or that about how things sounded and just get down to the business of making songs.
I assume it was all mixed down to DAT.
It was, and Tony helped me do that.
Was there any way to clean tape hiss up, like EQ it out or anything?
There was an minimum of stuff done but it sounded a lot better coming through the [direct] tape outs and into the Mackie [board]. It sounded a lot better. He had a compressor that he put on a couple of things but everything seems to sound compressed on a cassette four track.
Did you bounce tracks much? It's pretty minimal music.
Most of it was straight double tracking. Two guitars, two vocals. Towards the end, there's a song, "Last Call," which has more stuff going on. That was 4 tracks of guitars bounced down to two on another cassette and I put that cassette into the recorder [and added two more tracks]. The last song, that's an instrumental, was a really old recording from several years before.
A song that fit in with the new stuff?
Yeah.
During all this time there were Heatmiser records being made, with Tony producing. Were you happy with that stuff too?
Tony has a great ear. He's totally gifted. I wasn't happy with those records but it wasn't just because of how they sounded. Sometimes I tried to make the way they sounded be the scapegoat, in my mind, but the problem was that I was really having a hard time thinking of anything that I wanted to be singing about at the top of my lungs all the time. I was trying to do that but my head was in a different space. I wasn't even happy with the songs that I had written so everything else further down the line was not gonna be right 'cause it wasn't starting out intact.
Were you happy with the process of working in a bigger studio as opposed to four tracking?
At the time it was pretty exciting to be in a real studio. Looking back, I prefer to be left alone, without a timeline, to not have to go and record an entire record in four days and have a cold and still have to sing all the songs.
After that, you started working on your second solo album on the 8 track. Was that done on your Tascam 38?
